CNET Prizefight

T-Mobile MyTouch 3G vs. Palm Pre

The Palm Pre is back in the Prizefight ring, but will the MyTouch 3G pack more punch than the Pre can handle?

3:37 / 8 September 2009

Transcript

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>> What's up Prizefight fans? I'm Brian Tong and we have a battle between two big name touch screen phones. The Palm Pre is back for action in this week's Prizefight and it's a faceoff between T-Mobile's MyTouch 3G and you guessed it, the Palm Pre. Now our judges for this fight our Senior Editor Kent German, Senior Editor Bonnie Cha and myself. We'll take all three judges' scores and average them out to the nearest 10th in each round, the final prizefight score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system. It's five rounds to the finish. The first round is sexiness. The MyTouch is the best design android phone to date. It's sturdy and sleek with a black finish, no physical keyboard and it's slightly thinner than the Palm Pre. The Pre is sexier when it's closed and slides up for a keyboard and it might not be as durable but it's not cheap either. The MyTouch just gets the edge with a 4 and the Pre gets a 3.7. The next round is navigation. The MyTouch is using the Android OS that's user friendly and customizable but I don't like jumping between the menu button and the touch screen to access functions; and Bonnie just prefers a physical keyboard. The Palm Pre does have a little learning curve for its gestures. Its keyboard is cramped but its multi touch screen and OS navigation is excellent. Palm takes this round with a 4.7 and the MyTouch 3G gets a 3.7. After averaging two rounds the Pre leads by two tenths. Round three is features and multitasking. All the core features like 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS are on both phones. The MyTouch has Alec [assumed spelling] e-mail support, the android apps store here totally outshines the Pres; there's voice dialing here and an expansion slight for memory. The Pre still lacks voice dialing and its apps store is still slim pickings but its multitasking capabilities with its deck of cards interface is second to none. The Pre gets another 4.7 and the MyTouch gets a 4. Next round is web browsing and multimedia. The MyTouch's web browsing is solid but with no multitouch the browser isn't on the level of the Pres. It also makes the cardinal sin with no 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. There's video capture with its 3 megapixel camera but it's not too hot and overall nothing really wowed us. The Palm Pre shines with the browser second only to Safari with its multi touchability. The music player has a sexier interface and video looks great on the display as well. The 3 megapixel camera was satisfactory but there's no video capture here. The Pre takes the third round in a row with a 4.7 and the MyTouch gets a 3.3. So after four rounds the Pre has definitely widened the gap and the MyTouch has some serious rounds to make up. The final round that decides it all is called call quality. The MyTouch 3G runs on T-Mobile, the Palm Pre runs on Sprint and call quality sounded excellent on both phones. I did find that the MyTouch was just barely warmer with a tad less echo and that was the difference. The My Touch gets a 4.7 and the Pre gets a 4.3. So let's average out all the rounds and in a prizefight where the Palm Pre jumped out early and stayed on top, it takes this battle 4.4 to 3.9 and is your Prizefight winner. I'm Brian Tong. Thanks for watching and we'll catch you guys next time on another Prizefight.
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